I've been a movie lover for as long as I can remember. I grew up on a steady diet of horror cinema, spaghetti westerns, American musicals, espionage adventures and Japanese monster movies that gave me the ability to appreciate films that were often marginalized by other film fans and overlooked by many critics. As I got older my interest in cinema expanded into areas like Italian Neorealism as well as the French, British and Japanese New Wave.

My first film reviews were published in my junior high school newspaper and when I started attending college I concentrated on film studies. For the last 10 years I’ve been writing about film regularly at Cinebeats.com and I currently write for Turner Classic Movies at TCM.com and contributed to their official Movie Morlocks blog for the past 6 years. Some of my other writing accomplishments include providing liner notes for the CD release of John Barry’s soundtrack for BOOM! (1968), writing an overview of Lee Marvin’s performance in POINT BLANK (1967) for the 2008 Woodstock Film Festival guide and being nominated for a Rondo Award thanks to my appreciation of classic and not-so-classic horror films. I’ve also contributed to various film related magazines and websites including Cineaste, Fandor, Paracinema and The Cultural Gutter. In 2012 I was invited to join the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

Besides my Cinebeats blog, you can also find me on Twitter @cinebeats.

To view The Body Snatcher click here. Director Robert Wise is widely regarded as a journeyman filmmaker with no defining traits or distinct talents. In The American Cinema: Directors And Directions 1929-1968 critic Andrew Sarris famously labeled Wise’s output as “strained seriousness” asserting that the director’s “stylistic signature . . . is indistinct to the […]

To view The Plumber click here. Our fears take many forms. I was born and (mostly) raised in California so it’s probably not surprising that I fear natural disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires, which are currently ravaging the place I call home. Others are terrified by serial killers and mad gunmen such as the […]

To view Onibaba click here. In feudal Japan, war is being waged between Imperial forces loyal to the reigning emperor and those who support the shogun. Samurai warriors wearing expensive armor and carrying powerful weapons fight side by side with peasant farmers conscripted into military service. Amid this bloody chaos women, children and the elderly suffer […]

To view Pool of London click here. I, along with some of my fellow StreamLine colleagues, have been modestly building a case for the reassessment of Basil Dearden’s career during the past year by spotlighting many of his films including Sapphire (1959), The League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961), All Night Long (1963), Frieda (1947), The […]

To view The Three Musketeers click here. To view The Four Musketeers click here. Director Richard Lester was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but he made some of the best British films of the 1960s. Inspired by Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, he developed an acute funny bone and an appreciation of the absurd that allowed […]

To view Carry On Screaming! click here. “The usual charge to make against the Carry On films is to say that they could be much better done. This is true enough. They look dreadful, they seem to be edited with a bacon slicer and the comic rhythm jerks along like a cat on a cold […]

To view A Cottage on Dartmoor click here. “The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one’s soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but on the other hand, […]

To view The Ruling Class click here. If you want a lesson in how awards are inadequate indicators of talent look no further than the case of the late, great Peter O’Toole. Before his death in 2013, O’Toole was nominated for an Oscar 7 times but he lost on every occasion. In 2002, when the […]

To view Daisy Kenyon click here. Daisy Kenyon (1947) is a rarity. It’s a romantic Hollywood movie made for adults that refuses to sentimentalize its subject and treats all its characters respectfully despite their failings and their flaws. Joan Crawford stars as Daisy, an ambitious commercial artist who becomes involved in a complicated love triangle […]

FilmStruck is currently streaming 11 films featuring Alain Delon as part of their “Icons: Alain Delon” theme and for the next 4 weeks I’ll be spotlighting a few of my favorite titles in this collection. To learn more about the French actor please see a previous post I wrote in 2010 to celebrate Delon’s 75th […]

Streamline is the official blog of FilmStruck, a new subscription service that offers film aficionados a comprehensive library of films including an eclectic mix of contemporary and classic art house, indie, foreign and cult films.